As Ithers See Us

I suppose I could do this any time, but it seems a particularly odd angle to be viewing recent UK events sitting in a cafe in Salamanca, in the Castilian heart of Spain’s heartland. Like Burns said, ‘Oh would some power the giftie gie us/tae see oursels as ithers see us.’

I make no comment, of course, on the political viewpoint presented in this article: but it’s interesting to see British politics refracted through the lens of another country’s media (El Pais is a major, slightly left-leaning, Spanish daily). The article’s author is John Carlin, who Wikipedia tells me is half-Scottish, half-Spanish, and has spent his career on both sides of the Hispano- and Anglo-phone world, having been a contributor to El Pais since 1998.

Translated fast and loose, for style rather than pinpoint accuracy: but happy as always to take corrections where I’ve gone too far off-piste.

18th July, 2016

The New British Dictatorship

Theresa May’s Conservative Government has the way clear to do exactly as it pleases

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold….’

WB Yeats, The Second Coming

You’re afraid to find out what’s happening in the world at the moment. Put the radio on, glance at a mobile screen, the paper or the television and we see that the Brexiteers won, there’s been a terrorist attack in Nice and a military coup in Turkey (1); every day the polls bring more and more credence to the idea of Donald Trump becoming President of the United States. Newsflash – here’s the latest: the United Kingdom has turned into a one party state.

Yes: the one time exemplar of parliamentary democracy in Britain is no longer so exemplary. The new Prime Minister, Theresa May, is the head of a rightist government with no opposition. The monopoly of power it holds is reminiscent of that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, or, in the time of Jose Lopez Portillo, of the PRI in Mexico. It’s the opposite of what we see in the young Spanish democracy, a model of multi-party politics (with all the frustrations it creates)(2) in comparison to the most recent version of the ancient Britannic version.

May’s Conservative Government has the way clear to do exactly as it pleases. She has just named the three stooges charged, as ministers, with the most important issue her Government faces: to negotiate the new economic and political terms between the UK and the EU post-Brexit. But the Labour Party, who came second in last year’s elections, hasn’t said a peep. Its members are dedicating all their energy to a fratricidal conflict which threatens to end with the Left out of government for a generation or more.

If the UK is, in general, giving the world an object lesson in how not to govern a country, the labour movement is playing out a farce which should serve as a warning to those in Europe and further afield who think left-wing policies are the solution to growing inequality in a rampant capitalist system, incapable of delivering its eternal promise that prosperity higher up will filter down to those beneath.

The British Left’s problem is not new. In their efforts to be at peace with each other, its supporters forget the practical necessity of delivering a convincing message to the electorate. The particular problem for Labour currently is its messenger, Jeremy Corbyn, party leader since last September. Corbyn is, from all angles, a good man, honest, and irredeemably faithful to his socialist ideals. His weak point is that he opposes, but doesn’t propose: he is against many things, but no one knows what he’s in favour of. For that reason, and because he is also greyer than the London sky, 80% of Labour MPs have said that he is chronically incapable of mounting an effective opposition to the Conservative Government, far less win a General Election.

In 2014, the party changed their leadership election rules, moulding them to the principle of direct democracy which some followers had converted to thanks, in no small part, to the notion promoted with evangelistic zeal on social media that that everyone’s opinions are equally valid, and that the ‘experts,’ as one of the pro-Brexit Conservative leaders said during the campaign, had nothing to teach us. Previously, the votes of the MPs were decisive in the leadership election. Now an MP’s vote counts the same as anyone else’s. The change was to give everyone’s vote an equal weight: to be member you had only to pay £3, currently €3.58.

Three quarters of paid up members are middle class: more than a half have a university degree. They do not offer a true image of the class which Labour, founded in the union movement, is supposed to represent. They are more likely to be Guardian readers, more prosperous than average, highly educated, and full of desire to atone for their guilt at their good fortune. Those were the people who, by a huge margin, chose Corbyn last September, the Labour leadership candidate who represented to the Left the most pure and without sin.

Corbyn, who detests the electoral pragmatism of Tony Blair more than the Tories themselves, is all heart. No one celebrated Corbyn’s victory more than a Guardian journalist who has, now, changed his mind: Seumas Milne continues to write for the newspaper, but is now the Labour Party’s Director of Strategy and Communication. A version in caricature of the typical Guardian reader, Milne comes from a rich family, went to one of the most exclusive private schools in England, studied at Oxford, and currently lives in a house worth €2.5m on the edge of London.

A Guardian columnist published a portrait of Milne this weekend. He recalled that Milne has always been a fervent anti-imperialist, but only as regards US imperialism. Russian Soviet imperialism was another matter. ‘He says he’s a socialist, but he kneels down and doffs his cap to the capitalist kleptocracy of the Putin regime, the columnist wrote. ‘He defended the Communist one party state of Stalin, but now he’s converting Britain into a Tory one party state.’

Of course, Milne, like Corbyn, is an admirer of Chavez’s Venezuela, the disasters of which he hasn’t seen any need to distance himself from. Nor have the majority of party members seen any need to distance themselves from Corbyn, even though he has shown no capacity to inspire the same idolatry amongst the working classes he says he represents. The proof was that the most militant of them voted for Brexit in the referendum with Nigel Farage, leader until recently of the far right party UKIP, than with Corbyn, who favoured remaining in the EU.

Today, the majority of Labour MPs are terrified that they will lose their seats in the next election. For that reason, but also to avoid the only opposition to the Tories being UKIP, they have called for Corbyn to stand down. Corbyn, described by his rivals as a leader of protest, not of government, has refused to do so.

There will soon be further internal Labour Party elections. Thanks to the ideological fortitude of its members, there is every indication that Corbyn will win. No one will celebrate more than Theresa May and the other caudillos of the new Conservative Dictatorship.

(1) written before the coup failed. At least at the time of this translation. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

(2) For a long time a two-party system between the PP (centre right) and PSOE (centre left), Spanish politics seems to have entered a fractured phase with the 2015 election creating no overall majority, and the June 2016 elections still leaving no party with an overall majority between the PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos (centre-left) and Podemos (left-wing, anti-austerity) being the main players, with further regional parties having a small number of seats. The PP’s Mariano Rajoy remains Prime Minister.

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